Question: Do the scriptures touch on anything concerning modern plagues, such as Covid 19, and how church members should respond to continued WHO and CDC policies sponsored by the church to take vaccines into their bodies?
Answer: While it remains a personal decision whether to take any vaccine—including the now much discredited Covid 19 shots—the scriptures offer clear guidelines on what we are to take into ourselves and what to avoid. Says Paul, speaking of our bodies, “Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
The Word of Wisdom makes a particular point of warning us: “Behold, verily, thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation” (Doctrine & Covenants 89:4). As the harmful effects of certain ingredients in vaccines go far beyond those of tea, coffee, and alcohol, church members have a duty to apply all such scriptures to themselves.
Indeed, the church has a special mission: “A commandment I give unto you, to prepare and organize yourselves by a bond or everlasting covenant that cannot be broken. And he who breaketh it shall lose his office and standing in the church, and shall be delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until the day of redemption. Behold, this is the preparation wherewith I prepare you, and the foundation, and the ensample which I give unto you, whereby you may accomplish the commandments which are given you;
“That through my providence, notwithstanding the tribulation which shall descend upon you, that the church may stand independent above all other creatures beneath the celestial world; That you may come up unto the crown prepared for you, and be made rulers over many kingdoms, saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Zion, who hath established the foundations of Adam-ondi-Ahman” (Doctrine & Covenants 78:11–15). Being beholden to human institutions rather than to God, in other words, forfeits God’s glorious promise.
